Scott Eugene Roberts: Artist Becomes Pro-Bobblehead Designer After Paralyzing Injury

It takes a special person to think about career moves when going through one of the most difficult times of their life, and that person is Scott Eugene Roberts. A professional artist for decades, Roberts, 58 years old and from Minnesota, has been paralyzed for 5 years, and that is all the time it took for him to create a new path for his career. How did he do it? Read on for his story.

Injured at Dawn of the Pandemic

On the night of December 31st, 2019, Roberts was enjoying family time at the home of his daughter for a pre-birthday lunch when everything changed. “I stood up to go to my kitchen, became discombobulated, and fell head first 15 steps to a hard basement floor,” he says. “I landed with my feet in the air, head and neck flush with the floor. I fractured my C2 to T2 vertebra.”

Roberts sustained an incomplete injury. “I’m able to shuffle through my home using walls, counters, and furniture for stabilization. I’m often off balance and weak limbed, but I managed to move without aid devices inside. Outside my home, I am confined to a wheelchair or walker. And as much as I would desire (driving), with my complete lack of neck and shoulder mobility, I feel driving makes me unsafe.”

A lifelong artist, Roberts had an internship with Disney pre-injury and spent several years as a board member for the regional Minnesota State Arts Board. After his injury, he saw a business opportunity. “I wanted to utilize my time during rehabilitation to my advantage. I chose to seek out companies online that I would not normally ever seek out to offer my time and experience at their disposal. Among those emails, I wrote to what I would call ‘dream companies;’ including sending an email to a pair of brothers out of England animating music videos, a museum in Georgia for puppets and a bobblehead company in Chicago called the Bobblehead Factory.”

Prior to his accident, he was a successful illustrator. “I did quite a few things related to illustration such as designing cartoon characters for mascots, creating coloring books, designing greeting cards and also running my own business for 10 years creating custom wedding cake toppers and figurines, including bobbleheads.”

His injury was a catalyst to pursue new art styles. “Before my injury, I would draw constantly keeping art journals, drawing almost daily. I take pride in my cartooning ability and being able to mimic other artists’ stylization. I felt at home with a pencil or paintbrush to complete any project I put my mind to,” he says.

“After my injury, not so much. I feared finding out that my passion was over. Sitting in my studio became a Bain in my recovery, ‘Can I or can’t I?‘ Drawing became difficult, often very frustrating, in the struggle to put on paper what I saw in my head. “

This didn’t mean Roberts gave up on his passion for creating art. He just had to rework how he made it. “I painted many of the same areas several times over and over and over the side-effects of trembling and seizures. Positive thinking led me to find the perfect line. It just so happens to be in the mix of 8-10 wrong ones.”

Next Chapter: Bobblehead Designer & Peer Mentor

And just as fate would have it, one of the work emails he sent during rehab proved more than successful. “The owner of the bobblehead factory contacted me and asked if I could design bobble heads for mass production. I was not to physically create the bobblehead, but I could provide a rendering drawing of the subject to provide to the customer,” and this is what Roberts did. He can now say he’s designed over 10,000 individual bobbleheads in his roughly 5 years as a bobblehead designer.

“Of my first bobblehead projects, they are Byron Buxton, Dak Prescott, and Patrick Sultan II. The truth is I went from designing one bobblehead to tens of thousands of them. If I hadn’t been emboldened to push myself to try new things, having overcome the fear of the unknown because like other SCI survivors, fear and pain are too much of a daily ritual. And without my disabling accident bolstering my ego, I never would have reached out to become a Professional Bobblehead designer. I love that title.”

Roberts has incorporated adaptive equipment into his art creation process, creating a style he calls “Slam Sculpting.” “I at first wrapped half a roll of duct tape around a pencil to improve my grasp and I still couldn’t get it to move. Like many quadriplegics, my abilities are unique to my body and my injuries. So what I developed that works for me probably won’t work as well for others. So my best advice is get creative and try everything.”

Overtime, he developed a style that he felt comfortable with and also best encapsulated his creative nature. “I can remember days where my shoulders were so weak I would throw my arm up and down. I used a sling and a pound of clay strapped to my hand to help raise and lower my shoulder attached to my neck, which of course is attached to my back. I can’t say this would work for others, but it not only built up strength and endurance to work with clay (the medium used to create bobbleheads).”

Roberts also recognized something unique about his personality – he was more positive than the average person with a spinal cord injury – which he thought might make him a good SCI peer mentor. “I reached out to every SCI organization I could find online. I felt an overwhelming need to not just pass along my positivity that I feel about my situation but to help others develop their own, according to their life, not mine. Some national chapters and others more local.”

After reaching out to several organizations, More Than Walking, a spinal cord injury nonprofit, offered him an interview. “I took a chance and interviewed. I work with newly injured members, struggling to regain some form of their past lives with current circumstances and see what they can merge. We all can relate to that and being fresh out of surgery (I was 7 months at the time) gave me both embassy and sympathy.”

This year will be an exciting year for Roberts’ art career, as he will be showcasing his art at an exhibit that will debut on August 9th, 2025. “Two years after my injury, I wrote a grant entitled ‘Me, ADA and the Minnesota Art community.’ This exhibit gave me the drive to continue, to strive, to improve and to always be myself. This new grant is titled ‘Lost Heroes of the Imagination.’ It will be showing at the Owatonna Art Center.”

“I would just like to remind everyone reading this that if they are facing their own difficult circumstances to remember, there is only one act, there is no rehearsal, everything is live. You have a right to be happy. Creating art just so happens to be a passion that keeps me alive and gives me life. With that I’ll leave you with a single statement. You don’t have to be an artist to create ART, just find out what your ART is.”

– Roberts’ art can be purchased online through his Facebook page QuadTOONs (he will also take consignments anytime)

– Roberts talks about SCI peer mentoring